Good Food, Strong Communities

Promoting Social Justice through Local and Regional Food Systems

Steve Ventura, Martin Bailkey, Steve Ventura, Martin Bailkey

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781609385439
• eBook ISBN: 9781609385446
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Agricultural Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Many Americans are hungry, while others struggle to find healthy foods. What are communities doing to address this problem, and what should they be doing? Good Food, Strong Communities shares ideas and stories about efforts to improve food security in large urban areas of the United States by strengthening community food systems. It draws on five years of collaboration between a research team comprised of the University of Wisconsin, Growing Power, and the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and more than thirty organizations on the front lines of this work in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Madison, and Cedar Rapids. Here, activists and scholars talk about what's working and what still needs to be done to ensure that everyone has access to readily available, affordable, appropriate, and acceptable food.

The approach begins by laying out the basic principles of food security and food justice in light of the diversity of food system practices and innovations in America's cities. The contributing authors address land access for urban agriculture, debates over city farming, new possibilities in food processing, and the marketing of healthy food. They put these basic elements—land, production, processing, and marketing—in the context of municipal policy, education, and food justice and sovereignty, particularly for people of color. While the path of a food product from its producer to its consumer may seem straightforward on the surface, the apparent simplicity hides the complex logistical—and value-laden—factors that create and maintain a food system. This book helps readers understand how a food system functions and how individual and community initiatives can lessen the problems associated with an industrialized food system. 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword by Will Allen
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Connections between Community Food Security and Food System Change / Steve Ventura and Martin Bailkey
• Chapter 2. Land Tenure for Urban Farming: Toward a Scalable Model / Nate Ela and Greg Rosenberg
• Chapter 3. Growing Urban Food for Urban Communities / Anne Pfeiffer
• Chapter 4. Distribution: Supplying Good Food to Cities / Lindsey Day-Farnsworth
• Chapter 5. Food Processing as a Pathway to Community Food Security / Greg Lawless
• Chapter 6. Markets and Food Distribution / Greg Lawless and Alfonso Morales
• Chapter 7. The Consumer: Passion, Knowledge, and Skills / Monica Theis
• Chapter 8. It All Starts with the Soil / Steve Ventura
• Chapter 9. Uprooting Racism, Planting Justice in Detroit / Jeffrey Lewis, Nicodemus Ford, and Samuel Pratsch
• Chapter 10. Achieving Community Food Security through Collective Impact / Greg Lawless, Stephanie Calloway, and Angela Allen
• Chapter 11. Education and Food System Change / Desiré Smith and Steve Ventura
• Chapter 12. Community and Regional Food Systems Policy and Planning / Lindsey Day-Farnsworth and Margaret Krome
• Chapter 13. Cultural Dissonance: Reframing Institutional Power / Erika Allen, Rodger Cooley, and Laurell Sims
• Chapter 14. Innovations and Successes / Steve Ventura
• References
• Contributors
• Index